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I’ve had an unplanned hiatus from blogging for the past 2 months. Blogging is one of the first things that gets neglected when time is tight. I decided to do something I’ve never done, and try to predict what teams will go to the playoffs and who will win the big one. It will be fun and will provide a good laugh when I check it again in February and see how ridiculously wrong I was.

For those of you that aren’t NFL fans, go ahead and skip reading this one

Here are my picks for each division, along with wild cards:

AFC North: Baltimore Ravens – Whenever the Ravens have a legitimate chance I’m totally going to be a homer and pick them to win. However, I do think the Bengals could win the division and the Steelers can’t be totally written off either, especially since they should have the easiest schedule of those 3 teams.

AFC South: Indianapolis Colts – How can you pick against the team that’s won 12+ games every year for the better part of a decade? The Texans will be good, the Titans will surprise but the Colts will still hold on.

AFC East: New York Jets – The Patriots and the Jets both have huge question marks in my mind, so I’m going with the team that should have the easier schedule.

AFC West: San Diego Chargers – The Chargers had been Super Bowl favorites for a few years but could never win in the playoffs. I think they’ll still hold on to their AFC West dominance though.

AFC Wild Cards: Bengals & Steelers – yup, it’s going to be an AFC North party in the playoffs.

NFC North: Green Bay Packers – Aaron Rodgers was great last year and will likely improve this year. The defense won’t be as solid, but should still play well enough to win a lot of games.

NFC South: New Orleans Saints – The champions will finally win their division in back-to-back years.

NFC East: Dallas Cowboys – This was probably the hardest one to pick as the NFC East seems to always be highly competitive. This year will probably be no different as the Redskins will surprise.

NFC West: San Francisco 49ers – Arizona will fall from their recent level of success, the Rams are rebuilding and Seattle will compete but I think the 49ers will win it, even with lackluster QB play.

NFC Wild Cards: Vikings & Giants – If Favre survives the season the Vikings should win enough for a Wild Card and I see the Giants playing better defense this year.

My Super Bowl pick: Ravens over Green Bay - The Ravens offense will have to live up to expectations in order to beat Green Bay but they’ll have to do that to even make it this far anyhow. From year to year, typically there’s 50% turnover in the playoff picture and I only have 25%, so I will likely be laughing at these picks in February.

What are your picks?

Below is an infographic from Mashable comparing the soon-to-be-released Droid X and the newly released iPhone 4. What’s your phone of choice?

We use Google Analytics to track our website traffic.  With analytics, you can see what keyword searches on the internet that led people to your website.  Here are some funny ones that led to people to communitycc.net:

"1280 x 1024 church" – Looking for a church that fits your computer screen resolution?  Apparently we're it.

"church services white marsh md saturday" – You'll be the only one at our Saturday service.

"churches in white march" – We have had a lot of snow lately, but none this month.

"communitycc.net smtp" – Looking to use our email server?  Sorry.

"international christian community church in baltimore" – I missed the announcement where we went global.

"romantic church evening scheduled for saturday white marsh md" – I don't think they found what they were looking for.

"white churches in maryland" – I hope they found us….and changed their worldview.

"community christina church in white marsh"  - Sorry, we're all about Jesus, not Christina.

I love behavioural sciences.  I know very little about the subject but it intrigues me.  I think it is very interesting to learn why people do what they do and how their communication (verbal and non-verbal) can say more than they plan to share if one knows how to understand it.  

….to watch Transformers 2.  I know, I'm a huge nerd.  And if you didn't already think so, you will after I tell you that I "robotized" myself on the transformersmovie.com website:

Check out this video that shows some amazing creativity.  I'd love to see it in person to see how real it looks from a short distance away.  Visit the blog here if you can't see the video below.

 If you liked the parody Q & A with Craig Groeschel you might like this one with John Maxwell. 

This is a hilarious video the Catalyst team put together to introduce Craig at Catalyst West Coast:

The team at LifeChurch.tv put together this clip showing "Satan's" thoughts on the economy and money.  Funny, sad and true all at the same time:

In Discovery Island we have been having a "County Fair" theme all month to celebrate the virtue of fairness.  We have the environment decorated like a county fair, complete with booths where kids can play games and do activities you would typically find at a fair or carnival (ball toss, face painting, etc) and they get candy as prizes. 

We had to cut time out of our small group time (the most important time) in order to provide enough time for kids to really enjoy the booths each week.  It was a great decision, because a lot of momentum has been created this month and the fun the kids are having has been a great motivation to them. 

Specifically, they have been motivated to take advantage of everything we encourage families to do at CCC.  We provide take home cards to the kids each week so they can continue the conversation at home with their parents.  In order to encourage kids and parents to use those cards, we told the kids they can get extra booth tickets each week if they completed those cards at home with their parents.  We also told them they could get extra tickets by inviting friends to Discovery Island each week.  So far we have seen a lot of kids bringing in their cards they did at home and bringing new friends. 

Fun is a great motivator and has unfortunately been lost in many church environments.  I just hope we can continue to the momentum in March as we talk about the virtue of hope.